Barnaby, Volume 3

By Crockett Johnson. Published by Fantagraphics.

Hardcover, 372 pages, B&W, 2016 (originally published 1946-1947) 

This is the third book in a series of five collecting Harold and the Purple Crayon author Crockett Johnson's long-lost newspaper comic strip about a five-year-old boy and his fairy godfather.

The long-lost comic strip masterpiece by legendary children's book author Crockett Johnson (Harold and the Purple Crayon, The Carrot Seed), collected in full and designed by graphic novelist and Barnaby superfan Daniel Clowes (Ghost World). Volume Three collects the postwar years of 1946-1947, continuing five-year-old Barnaby Baxter and his Fairy Godfather J.J. O'Malley's misadventures. Bumbling but endearing, Mr. O'Malley rarely gets his magic to work -- even when he consults his Fairy Godfather's Handy Pocket Guide. The true magic of Barnaby resides in its canny mix of fantasy and satire, amplified by the understated elegance of Crockett Johnson's clean, spare art. In its combination of Johnson's sly wit and O'Malley's amiable windbaggery, a child's feeling of wonder and an adults' wariness, highly literate jokes and a keen eye for the ridiculous, Barnaby expanded our sense of what comics can do. This volume also features essays by comics historians Nathalie op de Beeck and Coulton Waugh, as well as Johnson biographer Philip Nel.